The present invention related to the general technical field of devices and appliances having as their object toasting and/or reheating of edible food products by the intermediary of an infrared radiation treatment. The invention concerns a toasting and/or reheating appliance for food products of the bread type. The invention concerns particularly a bread toaster.
The present invention thus relates in particular to a toasting appliance for bread products, constituted by a frame provided with an insertion slot opening on a toasting chamber intended to receive the products, and disposed between heating elements associated with heat reflectors, which permit heat energy, produced by the heating elements, notably in the form of radiation, to be directed toward the products, said appliance being provided with observation means for visual monitoring of the degree of toasting of said products placed in the toasting chamber.
It is thus already known, from the document FR-A-2,050,772, to provide a toaster furnished with a window for observation of the toasting operations. In effect, it is a matter of an electric toaster having the form of a housing whose lateral walls form the toasting chamber. Transparent windows are arranged in said walls in a manner to permit the user to observe the bread slices disposed in the toaster. The heating elements as well as the heat reflectors of the toaster are disposed in such a manner that they do not mask the bread slices that it is necessary to observe. There are thus interior surfaces of the housing which can serve as reflectors. Special reflectors can equally be mounted at the interior of the housing.
One problem, connected with the design of the toaster described in this document, resides in the positioning on the housing of observation windows having a substantial surface in a manner to obtain a sufficient visibility generating, at the same time, a substantial loss of thermal radiation. The positioning of the specific reflectors does not allow for a solution for this problem starting from the moment where these latters are disposed in a manner to not diminish visibility.
Another shortcoming of the toaster described herein is equally connected with visibility constraints. In effect, the form or the specific arrangement of the heat reflectors significantly alters the quality of the toasting of the bread slices and provokes a significant heating of the housing. In effect, significant infrared radiation leakages have as a consequence to increase the toasting time of the bread slices in order to obtain an acceptable degree of cooking. Such an increase in the duration of toasting very often provokes an excessive drying of the bread slices. Such a drying is equally linked to the nature and/or the freshness of said bread slices which causes the attainment of an optimal grilling quality with the toaster described herein to be very uncertain.
Another drawback linked with the utilization of a toaster described in the above-mentioned document results from the influence of ambient light or possibly the visible spectrum radiated by the heating elements. The observed image of the color of the products being prepared is often altered with respect to the real color. The wavelength of the maximum energy emitted by the heating resistances generates a dominant red which is very remote from the spectrum of the usual lighting lamps. This is often found to be annoying.